Wednesday, 15 May 2019

Far below Bermuda's pink sand beaches and turquoise tides, geoscientists have discovered the first direct evidence that material from deep within Earth's mantle transition zone—a layer rich in water, crystals and melted rock—can percolate to the surface to form volcanoes.

New analysis by the UK Trade Policy Observatory is warning that what should have been the technical formality of transferring EU powers into national law when the UK leaves the European Union, could instead open the gates for the widespread use of outlawed carcinogenic pesticides that have been shown to alter human reproductive, neurological, and immune systems.

As the buzzwords "machine learning" continue to grow in popularity, more industries are turning to computer algorithms to answer important questions, including high-stakes fields such as healthcare, finance and criminal justice. While this trend can lead to major improvements in these realms, it can also lead to major problems when the machine learning algorithm is a so-called "black box."

Reproducible scientific results are not always true and true scientific results are not always reproducible, according to a mathematical model produced by University of Idaho researchers. Their study, which simulates the search for that scientific truth, will be published Wednesday, May 15, in the journal PLOS ONE.

Beneath the surface web, the public form of the internet you use daily to check email or read news articles, exists a concealed "dark web." Host to anonymous, password-protected sites, the dark web is where criminal marketplaces thrive in the advertising and selling of weapons, drugs, and trafficked persons. Law enforcement agencies work continuously to stop these activities, but the challenges they face in investigating and prosecuting the real-world people behind the users who post on these sites are tremendous.

Solar cells made of perovskite hold much promise for the future of solar energy. The material is cheap, easy to produce and almost as efficient as silicon, the material traditionally used in solar cells. However, perovskite degrades quickly, severely limiting its efficiency and stability over time. Researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology, energy research institute DIFFER, Peking University and University of Twente have discovered that adding a small amount of fluoride to the perovskite leaves a protective layer, increasing stability of the materials and the solar cells significantly. The solar cells retain 90 percent of their efficiency after 1000 hours operation at various extreme testing conditions. The findings are published today in the leading scientific journal Nature Energy.

Young adults both believe and react negatively to messages that members of their age group are more entitled and narcissistic than other living generations, suggests new research presented by Joshua Grubbs of Bowling Green State University, Ohio, and colleagues in the open access journal PLOS ONE on May 15, 2019.

A genomic collision could explain why many kidney transplants fail, even when donors and recipients are thought to be well-matched, according to a new study from researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. This genomic collision is a genetic incompatibility between kidney donor and recipient, causing the recipient to mount an immune attack against the donor protein.

Spyware crafted by a sophisticated group of hackers-for-hire took advantage of a flaw in the popular WhatsApp communications program to remotely hijack dozens of targeted phones without any user interaction.

Developing egg cells conduct tests to select the healthiest of their energy-making machines to be passed to the next generation. A new study in fruit flies, published online May 15 in Nature, shows how the testing is done.

Tiny light-emitting microalgae, found in the ocean, could hold the secret to the next generation of organic solar cells, according to new research carried out at the Universities of Birmingham and Utrecht.

In recent years, it has become increasingly clear to researchers that the protein galectin-3 is involved in inflammatory diseases in the brain. A study led by researchers at Lund University in Sweden now shows the de facto key role played by the protein in Alzheimer's disease. When the researchers shut off the gene that produces this protein in mice, the amount of Alzheimer's plaque and the inflammatory load both decreased.

Researchers at the University of Arizona have completed the first-of-its-kind study that could aid in the treatment, diagnosis and prevention of cervical cancer by identifying cervicovaginal metabolic signatures, or "fingerprints" that distinguish patients with HPV, pre-cancerous cervical conditions and cancer.